


I Became Him

by Abitscrewy



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Cole the Mage, Drabble, Five Stages of Grief, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Imprisonment, In reference to canon, One Shot, Poor Cole, References to Canon, Short One Shot, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 21:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16542701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abitscrewy/pseuds/Abitscrewy
Summary: My interpretation of how Cole met and became Cole.





	I Became Him

_Is it possible to go through the five stages of grief by mourning your coming death?_

He was so happy. Proud of himself. He got away. His father would never find him again. Some part of him was wracked with guilt for his sister left behind, but he couldn't go back. He promised himself he'd never go back. Not that it mattered. Someone else, someone maybe worse than his father, found him. A Templar. Just doing his job, he said. Collecting Apostates and throwing them away like so much discarded flesh and bone. No amount of magic would save him, they said. He can hardly control his magic anyway. He tried to tell them, begged, pleaded with the Templar. But his cell was already prepared. He was to await his trial, which could end in one of two ways. Death, or 'tranquility'. He hates that term.

Maker, the cell is cold. The sort of cold that soaks through your clothes in moments, that crawls up your skin and spreads to places not even touching the frozen surface. It cracks your skin dry and thirsty, yet it burns. He's not sure any mage could even think well enough through the pain to cast any sort of spell.

He cried. There were no windows, nothing to tell him how long he's been here, but all he knows for a long time is tears and the twisting feeling in his gut that sucks the breath from him. Breathing stings, too cold, freezes his teeth and his lungs. A passing thought wonders if the lungs could pop from the pressure and the cold. But his thoughts become muddled and confused soon enough. For the first couple of days he wonders if they meant to make him confess or something, by not feeding him. As if they meant for this. But he has neither seen nor heard any guards. He knows they took him down quite a few sets of stairs, but he can't be certain how far down.  
_It's okay. Today they'll remember. They'll come feed me or take me away. It will end soon._

Merely a day later and he thinks himself mad. If he can't hear them, he'll sure as hell make them hear him. He screams and shouts and begs until his voice withers into tearless weeping. His fists bang against what he can only assume is the cell door in the dark. Make it loud, make it painful. He keeps going until his hands are so numb he can't be sure he's actually hitting it anymore. As much as it always hurt when his father eventually found his hiding places, at least life kept going afterwards. He dreads what will happen when they come for him, but he'd be found. He wonders if he'll smile.

He pleads with the darkness, with the loneliness, with the guards he wants to wish are outside his door right now. He offers all he has. Perhaps being tranquil isn't so bad, if it means he could forget all this and keep living. If he would no longer feel mad and wracked with guilt and fear. If he could just get them to listen to him. He could learn to control his magic, he could do whatever they ask of him. He'd take anything at this point. Even just a blanket or the tiniest piece of bread.

It's not long before he just stops. He doesn't bother to crawl into the corner, just lies there in the darkness wherever he is. Whats left of his tears fall. He finds only emptiness past the stabbing pain in his stomach and the numb stinging in his fists. He wonders if he'd died a long time ago, if this was just what comes after. Lousy way to end a lousy life, seems fitting to him. Everything he's ever done has been useless, all piling up and leading up to this hollow moment of realization.

His eyes sting. Have they been open for long? Were they closed? For the first time since he was thrown in here, some light was cast on the tiny room he's imprisoned in. Yet the door is still closed, locked tight. He drags a shaking arm across his eyes to clear the crusted tears and when he's done, he sees it is no Templar who stands above him. In fact, the figure he can only assume to be a ghost isn't even standing. It's sitting next to him.

Neither party speaks. They stare, and both seem to understand the other. The spirit sees a life of suffering. If only he had been anything else. If only he had stood up, fought, done something, stolen a knife, protected mother and his sister. The spirit wants to help. To erase, to ease the pain. But the boy is tired and broken. Shrunken guts content to eat themselves into dust. Cuts on broken hands. Death is coming, and there is nothing he can do. Nothing, save for taking one of those bloody hands in his own.

The mage smiles, for the first time in a long time, through tears he didn't know he had in him. The pain in his gut, twisting and treacherous, worsens and threatens to devour him whole.

Yet the spirit stays. Knowing he won't be saved from this. Already so close to the veil.

"Thank you" are the last words the mage utters.  
And in the last tattered moments of his vision he sees himself in the spirit, and he thinks that's okay.  
_Acceptance._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before I'd read Dragon Age: Asunder. I very much recommend you read it or listen to it if you can.


End file.
